THESE ARE ARCHIVED PAGES OF THE OLD EHISTORY SITE click here for the NEW eHistory site These pages are not actively maintained and may have errors in content and functionality
Maj. Gen. David Hunter and Capt. Quincy A. Gillmore, USA
Col. Charles H. Olmstead, CSA
The garrison had about 350 men; the Union besieged it with a larger force.
The Confederates lost 364 men; the Union only one.
Building the Fort
The Third System refers to 19th century military architecture in the United States. During the War of 1812 coastal defenses were fragmented and weak, a hodgepodge of batteries and posts, so the British could burn the nation's capital.
The US Government learned something, and designed a new coastal defense system to protect all major ports. The Third System was started during a relatively peaceful time for the United States, at least against maritime enemies. As a result, designs could be made in peace, and building could be methodical and complete - if sometimes slow. A professional board was appointed to oversee design and construction. Close to 200 forts were envisioned to guard the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but only 30 were built. (Many weren't completed because the budget was tight - and then the Civil War events at Pulaski showed the forts were obsolete.)
Fort Pulaski blocked upriver access to Savannah, and protected an important port.
After graduating from West Point, Lt. Robert E. Lee was in charge of designing the series of canals and earthworks that drained excess water from the Cockspur Island, just east of Savannah, Ga. This was Step1 before even a foundation could be built, and a fort put on top of that. (During the Civil War, Lee inspected the site and noticed the dike system had worked as planned. Land maps from the 1862 siege show the area inside the dike as the only dry expanse of land.)
Even after draining, soft muddy earth would not support the weight of the proposed 25 million bricks of the fort. The foundation began with seventy foot long pilings driven into the mud, then two layers of wooden subflooring would provide direct support for the brickwork. The laborers included military servicemen, skilled masons, and carpenters, many of the semi-skilled and manual laborers being slaves hired out from owners. The humid southern heat and mosquitoes caused their own problems, and in many summers work was abandoned. From 1829 to 1847, construction on the massive two story fort was intermittent.
It is ironic that much of the labor was done by enslaved African-Americans: during the war many local slaves enlisted in the Union Army at Fort Pulaski to fight for their freedom. Major General David Hunter heavily recruited African Americans from the coastal area. His efforts coupled with the will of those who endured slavery resulted in the formation of the First South Carolina Volunteer Regiment in 1862. Later characterized as 'Lincoln's Abolitionist General', Hunter freed area slaves by issuing General Order #7 (April 1862)
All persons of color lately held to involuntary service by enemies of the United States in Fort Pulaski and on Cockspur Island, Georgia, are hereby confiscated and declared free, in conformity with the law, and shall here after receive the fruits of their own labor.
The completed two tier fort is a truncated hexagon that faces east with walls 7' 6' thick and up to 35' high. Included is a demi-lune, moat, two powder magazines, and a parade ground about the size of a football field. The lower courses are local brownish 'Savannah Gray' brick, while the red brick higher up is from Baltimore, Maryland, and Alexandria, Virginia. The red is harder than the 'Savannah Grays', so it was used in the arches and embrasures.
Opening Days of the Civil War
As Georgia seceded, the state government did what it could to arm its troops and claim all Federal property within its borders. Savannah volunteer regiments such as the Irish Jasper Greens, Savannah Volunteer Guards, and Oglethorpe Light Infantry, hurriedly reorganized to support the State troops. The First Regiment of Georgia Volunteers took over the fort on January 3, 1861. This was seventeen days before Georgia formally succeeded from the Union and eight days after federal troops occupied Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. By pre-empting another similar US move Brown hoped to protect Savannah from the same fate as her sister city Charleston. Once Georgia joined the Confederacy some Confederate troops joined the garrison, and the armament was raised to 48 guns - ample against wooden ships.
The Siege
In the opening days of the war the rifled cannon was experimental: actual power and accuracy were unknown. Quincy A. Gilmore was Chief Engineer of the South Carolina Expeditionary Corps and decided to try the new gun's true worth against the formidable Fort Pulaski. Gilmore, an astute engineer, believed he could speedily bombard the fort and avoid a prolonged siege. Not everyone shared his faith in the new technology and some officers ridiculed him.
Union troops constructed eleven sand batteries on the northwest end of Tybee Island. (Four of the batteries were built on land used in the 1770s to quarantine newly arrived Africans.) All work was done at night and kept quiet as possible. Everybody whispered, and whistles were used instead of drums or bugles. Before each dawn new construction was covered with vegetation. Despite the soldiers' diligence at concealment, the thirty-six guns, magazines, and bomb-proof shelters, the garrison realized that something was going on.
The southern officers were curious but not too concerned about enemy activity on distant Tybee Island - they didn't believe there was a gun in the world accurate and effective at the two and a half miles range. Robert E. Lee remarked to the fort's commander 'Colonel, they will make it pretty warm for you here with shells, but they cannot breach your walls at that distance.'
10 minutes past 8 in the morning of April 10, 1862 the bombardment began. Gillmore had three dozen guns and mortars, but the ten rifled guns were the important ones. He concentrated their fire on the south-east corner of the fort (nearest Tybee Island) and soon knocked out many of the Confederate guns. (The Southerners had only one rifled gun, and it couldn't match the fire of the many Union ones.) By evening the targeted corner was crumbling. During the morning of the 11th the damage increased, and eventually the Union guns chewed through the walls: they could shoot into the main fort. With the main magazine exposed to Union fire, the Confederates raised the white flag.
The rifled cannon had rendered masonry forts obsolete. Rifled pieces could throw heavier shot, with greater accuracy and higher velocity than smooth-bore guns. Hunter exulted:
The result of this bombardment must cause...a change in the construction of fortifications as radical as that foreshadowed in naval architecture by the conflict between the Monitor and the Merimac. No works of stone or brick can resist the impact of rifled artillery of heavy calibre.
The Rest of the War near Savannah
The fall of Fort Pulaski and Major General David Hunter's subsequent general orders freeing local slaves did much to undermine slavery in the Low Country. African-Americans throughout the area fled to Fort Pulaski; many were recruited into the military forming the core of the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Volunteers. These are among the earliest Black units of the Union Army.
In October 1864, Union troops at Fort Pulaski accepted transfer of Confederate officers who would later be known as the Immortal Six Hundred.
The officers' plight started in South Carolina when Edwin Stanton, US Secretary of War, ordered that 600 prisoners of war be positioned on Morris Island in Charleston harbor within direct line of fire from Confederate guns at Fort Sumter. Stanton was responding to reports that 600 Union officers imprisoned in the city of Charleston were exposed to fire from Federal artillery. The standoff continued until a yellow fever epidemic forced the Confederates to remove the prisoners from the city. The US command then transferred the survivors from the open stockade at Morris Island to Fort Pulaski.
On October 23, 1864, 550 tired, ill-clothed men arrived at Cockspur Island. At first, they received extra rations, and were promised wool blankets and clothing, but despite the best intentions of the officers and enlisted men of the 127th New York, the War Department ignored requisitions for extra rations, blankets, and clothing. The winter was harsh; firewood was unavailable. Approximately twenty prisoners died in dismal conditions.
After picking out the lumps, bugs, and worms in this rotten corn meal there was not more than seven ounces of meal left fit for use. About December 10th scurvy made its appearance in our prison amongst the weakest of the prisoners. Most every man in the prison was suffering more of less with dysentery and a large majority were from the starvation diet, unable to leave their bunks.
--Capt. J. Ogden Murray; 7th Virginia Cavalry
The War Department prohibited the use of anti-scorbutic drugs to treat prisoners suffering from scurvy. The doctors had anti-scorbutics but weren't allowed to use them since Confederate prison doctors didn't give them to Union patients. It wasn't until March 1865 that the survivors were sent to the better conditions at Fort Delaware.
On December 20, 1864, General William Sherman occupied Savannah at the end of his March to the Sea. And yet, from all practical points, the city was already conquered.
CAMPAIGN
Union strategy included blockading the southern coast to cut foreign economic aid and all trade. If Savannah was blockaded, the Confederacy would lose an important port. Three railroads converged on the city and could not only bring in cotton, they could distribute war supplies landed at the port. The Union had established a blockade to strangle the poorly-industrialized South; to strengthen the high-seas blockade they also worked to seal the ports. A few months after capturing Port Royal, South Carolina as a blockade base, the joint Army-Navy Strategy Board decided to shut the port of Savannah. They didn't need to occupy the city, just close the port - and could do that if they had Fort Pulaski.
